Sharing some of what I talk about, and learn, in my private therapy sessions. I am blessed with a wonderfully supportive psychiatrist who provides me with both medication advice and therapy. I am hoping my experiences in my sessions can help someone else.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Gone

The Lady of Shallot, John Williams Waterhouse, 1888

It is gone. My good mood has disappeared and suddenly been replaced with exhaustion, fatigue, a desire and need to sleep all the time, depression and all its accouterments: fear, anxiety, dissociation/depersonalization, sadness, crying, an intense sense of loss, fleeting thoughts of my suicide and a fixation on other's successful suicides.

Just yesterday I wrote of creating a "benevolent structure..., especially when depressed". I could feel my mood slipping last week. I woke one morning and it was gone. That excited, life seeking, experience focused me was suddenly replaced by my old self.

I thought I had healed. I thought I was becoming well. I thought my depression had finally ended. I thought a new life had opened up for me. No such luck. How can I be so stupid, so mistaken, so wrong?

Last week I asked Dr. X if I would continue cycling my whole life. Usually he says we will find something to help me...and I always think he is lying to protect me. This time he said, "Maybe". I have long thought this to be the truth.

I am trying to live despite this being the truth. In fact, I have thought that to be the truth and to try to help myself I have fairly recently tried to really, really accept that idea: the idea that I must learn to LIVE with depression and swift mood changes. In keeping with that idea I am really trying to create a benevolent structure that works for me even when I crash, even when all I want to do is sleep.

It is really really hard though, to keep going when I feel this depressed. Today I have volunteered to teach a class. All night I dreamt of how I was going to mess it up, forget my material, be late for the class, be confused and completely disorganized while I am teaching the class. feel sick about having to teach. However, because I have made a commitment to teach I will go fear and anxiety or not.

I am not so sure that is a good thing right now. I have made so many commitments over the next few weeks that I am exhausted and anxious (go figure...how can I be both?) just thinking about all the things I need to do. Unfortunately, or fortunately, almost everything I committed to involves other people who are relying on me to show up.

Ironically, my benevolent structure is working as it should be, but I am not sure I want to do these things anymore. In my recent posts I have tried and tried to convince myself that doing things is the right thing for me to do. I'm not so sure that keeping up is possible now. How do I keep up with my schedule when all I want to do is sleep? When I am afraid to do the things I said I'd do? When all my will and motivation to do these things has disappeared into thin air?

1 comment:

I know where you are, it's all too familiar. What do you do? Wait for the change, isn't that all we can do? Attempt to follow the structure we laid down for ourselves, perhaps minimise it a little, and just wait.The coin will flip, eventually.

About Me

I am currently a lost soul on its quest for freedom. I have a mental illness; Chronic Major Depressive Disorder. My version of MDD sits somewhere in the Bipolar Spectrum, meaning my mood cycles between severe depression and then up high, very high, but not high enough to be considered hypomania. I am hoping to help myself and others who read this blog both understand this illness better and to learn something about ourselves in the process.